Mujeres Poderosas

This photo that I took in January, 2011, shows young teenage girls from the Andes mountains in Shilla, Peru on their first day of the club Mujeres Poderosas (Powerful Women) in which they participated in a 6 week workshop where we talked about everything from women's issues to sexual health to cooking and community service. On this, the very first hour they got together, you can see their excitement in their smiles as they cut out magazine pictures to glue in their daily journals as well as their shyness they had at first when looking at the girl in the foreground, her hand clasped over her mouth with verguenza. With the weeks that followed I slowly became their friend and confidant as that shyness and embarrassment faded away.